Nanguo Metropolis Daily
June 5, 2009

A huge storm ripped through central China on the night of June 3, dropping hail, torrential rains, and force 11 winds through the provinces of Henan and Anhui.

The image on the cover of today's Nanguo Metropolis Daily shouts "Natural Disaster" and features scenes of damaged buildings in both the city and countryside. The paper reports that 20 people in Henan died from the storm, and another 117 were injured (Xinhua's latest report says 22 deaths). Altogether, 3.46 million people were affected and more than 40,000 homes were damaged.

Despite the flashy front-page graphic, not much space is devoted to the storm inside the paper. Instead, like many papers across the country, today's big story is about the gaokao, the annual college entrance exam to be held on June 7 and 8 this year.

The three-page feature contains helpful tips for making it through two days of tests, reminders that being discovered with a mobile phone will void your results in that test module, and tales of the experiences of previous test-takers.

One such story is from 1977:

The annual college entrance exam approaches, and every year at this time, Shi Xianqing recalls the time in 1977 when he took the exam. He was part of the first group of students to take the exam after it was reinstated, and in 2001 he came to work in Sanya.

On the morning of the fourth, I visited Shi. From Fenqiu in Henan Province, he grew up in the countryside and entered high school with the best score in the entire commune.

High school classes back then were similar to those now, only less difficult. When Shi graduated in 1976, the college exam was still suspended, so he returned to work on the village production brigate. In those days, a high school education was like a college education now, and so he was put in charge of calculating work points for the brigade. At the end of the year he joined the commune's communications team and became very busy with liaison work between the higher ups and the day-to-day operation of the commune.

In 1977, Shi reached a turning point in his life: the college entrance exam was restarted.

"Three years before the gaokao was reinstated, I heard people talking about it," Shi said. He only half-believed the rumors, but to be on the safe side he got together high school textbooks. One month before the reinstatement, Shi received reliable information: the exam was going to resume shortly, and the commune leadership had specifically stated: "We must seize this opportunity!"

Shi was excited, for the time had finally arrived. Immediately, he began studying intensely. "Outside of normal working hours, I studied during the midday rest and the nighttime."

The night before the exam was the most unforgettable of Shi's life. He said that like students today, he was nervous and excited that night, and to ensure that he would make good use of his test-time, he asked a relative to lend him a watch, and also did several practice essays. "I couldn't sleep." His anxiety over the possibility he'd be late the next day kept him up until 2 in the morning.

The next day, Shi Xianqing got up early and rode a commune bike to the testing location. The test spanned two days, and apart from math, which he answered poorly, he felt he'd done fairly well.

"Lots of my high-school classmates took the exam." Afterward, they were all keyed up, and some of them had their bags all packed to go off to college.

Shi filled in three prospective colleges: Peking University, Zhengzhou University, and Henan Teachers' College. After the exam, he returned to his job at the commune, his exam results constantly occupying his thoughts as he waited for the scores to come out.

One month later, locals told him that a list had been put out in the county seat that had his name on it. Shi lept onto a bike and hurried to town, where he saw that he had been accepted to Henan Teachers' College.

"I was really excited," Shi said. In that era, it was no easy thing to test into college, and the commune leadership and the villagers all came to congratulate him. "I got lots of notebooks." Giving notebooks was quite popular at the time. One of Shi's older friends even took off his jacket to give to him as a gift.